Performance of UHMWPE in Knee Arthroplasty

The orthopedic literature contains thousands of articles describing the clinical performance of various knee replacemenf designs. As in the hip, the clinical performance of knee replacemenf is mosf imambiguously defined in terms of survivorship. Clinicians may disagree as to the precise etiology of a TKA failure, but the date of a revision surgery is a precise endpoinf for the procedure. 

On the other hand, survivorship alone does not fully capture the clinical performance of UHMWPE in the knee. Surface damage and wear of the UHMWPE insert are also important measures of clinical performance of knee arfhroplasty. If a knee prosthesis survives the first 10 years of implantation, wear behavior 

Previously implanted Insall-Burstein (IB II) and Miller-Gallante (MG II) tibial inserts with evidence of pitting and delamination, respectively. 

A more comprehensive evaluation of survivorship in contemporary knee arthroplasty (both UKA and TKA) can be derived from the national knee implant 

Summary of Total Knee Replacement Survival at 10 to II Years, Covering 5950 Total Knee 

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